What’s The Best Mistake You Ever Made?

I was driving home from a workshop, half listening to an interview on the radio, when I heard a question that really caught my attention.

The interviewer asked, ‘what was the best mistake you ever made?’ Well, that certainly woke me up and I kept repeating the question to myself ignoring the rest of the interview.

Why?

I’ve never been asked, ‘what’s the best mistake you ever made?’ and it’s such an unusual question. I have been asked the opposite of this, which is ‘what’s the worst mistake you ever made?’ And with a little thought that’s usually easy to answer. But ask me what my best mistake was and I’d have to think at a deeper level to answer it.

It’s amazing how one word in a question can make such a difference. Ask about the ‘worst’ and you usually get a horror story that can leave one stuck in one’s own misery. But ask about the ‘best’ and you are more than likely to get an answer that leads to a way forward, to a more appreciative understanding of the ‘mistake’.

So what’s the best mistake I ever made?

That’s going to take a lot of thought and time to answer so I’ll have to get back to you on that – perhaps in a future blog post. :)